ROME, NOV. 15, 2005 (Zenit.org).- An archbishop in Italy has officially proclaimed the “miraculous cure” of a long-suffering woman who went to the shrine at Lourdes, France, in 1952.
Archbishop Gerardo Pierro of Salerno made the proclamation last Friday. It is the 67th miracle tied to Lourdes and officially recognized by the Church.
The patient, Anna Santaniello of Salerno, now 94, suffered from childhood from a cardiac malformation, declared incurable by doctors.
At age 40, her health deteriorated severely and, despite the opinion of her doctors and family, she decided to travel to Lourdes.
Her malformation hindered her ability to walk and speak clearly. It also caused cyanosis in her face and edemas in her lower extremities.
Salerno’s La Città newspaper explained that the patient said she could “scarcely breathe anymore” and told her brother that “my last desire is to go to Lourdes,” where she arrived “alive but on a stretcher.”
Restored
Nuns lowered her into the pool and “the water was freezing,” Santaniello recalled.
“But I immediately felt something boiling in my chest, as if my life had been restored to me,” she said. “After a few seconds, I got up on my own and began to walk, refusing the help of the stretcher-bearers, who looked at me in disbelief.”
On her return home, Santaniello asked for an appointment with a well-known cardiologist, who “told me I didn’t have anything, that I was very healthy and that he couldn’t understand all the certificates and examinations that had previously been made.”
Santaniello has returned on subsequent occasions to the Marian shrine at Lourdes to offer her service as a volunteer in assisting the sick.
She and her family and friends attended the ceremony to proclaim the miracle, held in the John Paul II Metropolitan Seminary in Pontecagnano.
